DOJ Probes SC School Police Incident Cited by Sheriff

A viral video of a South Carolina school resource officer slamming a student to the floor of a classroom is focusing new attention on the increasing presence of police officers in schools. Richland County, S.C., Sheriff Leon Lott said the force Senior Deputy Ben Fields used to arrest a student who was disrupting a class Monday at Spring Valley High School on Monday was "not based on training or acceptable," Want to read more? Please subscribe to The Crime Report!

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When New York police officers temporarily reduced their “proactive policing” efforts on low-level offenses, major-crime reports in the city actually fell, according to a study based on NYPD crime statistics. The findings, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, put a crack in the “broken windows” theory of policing that has become a mainstay of many urban police departments, Want to read more? Please subscribe to The Crime Report!

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Legislatures around the country are considering—and passing—bills to tighten rules governing the use of criminal informants. The “new wave of reforms” is long overdue for a practice that has historically been secretive and under-regulated, writes a University of California law professor.

The FBI says homicides rose nearly 9 percent last year over 2015, but a deeper look at the numbers suggests that a significant portion of the increase can be traced to individual neighborhoods in a few big cities.

Ariana Fajardo Orshan, who has spent most of her career in family court, has emerged as the front runner to lead the 250-attorney office of the U.S. attorney for south Florida. She has no federal law enforcement experience but is supported by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Rick Scott.